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Reporting and conviction rates

Lisa Vetten (manager of the Gender Unit at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa) outlines the many hurdles a survivor of sexual assault faces when she wants to achieve legal justice:

1. The person at the counter of the police station may say something that discourages her
2. Depending on the detective’s workload and experience, he/she may make a judgment about how much investigation time is allocated and often it’s insufficient
3. A doctor may make mistakes during the medical examination for a variety of reasons – lack of experience, poor training, isn’t interested, doesn’t care, it’s late at night or he/she wants to go home
4. People may not be willing to be witnesses
5. The case may be postponed (adjourned) at the request of the prosecution so many times that the judge will insist it is withdrawn
6. The survivor may not ‘perform’ under cross-examination
7. The prosecutor may not know how to interpret the medical evidence

‘It’s all those hurdles and barriers and filters along the way, that’s why I think so few cases result in conviction. Never mind of course the fact that you still have I think magistrates who may themselves subscribe to a whole host of stereotypes around rape. Some years ago they did drop the cautionary rule around sexual assault which stated that the evidence presented by women or girls who had been raped had to be treated with extra caution because women are known to make up stories and to tell lies due to a whole range of reasons – neurosis and spite, to use some of the words that they did.’

‘A tactic that [is used] is to just delay and delay and delay and eventually it wears you out completely and you do give up because after three, four, five years and the trial has still not started or the endless postponements, you don’t have the energy to continue any more.’

‘Other women I think can sometimes be left feeling quite bitter and betrayed that a system which says “Break the silence. Speak out. Come forward” does not reward you in any way for doing that and the sense that justice has been done [is not accorded].’

If the criminal justice system is not going to assist a woman or child who has been sexually assaulted, what else could be done to help them come to terms with the attack and find another sense of justice?

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 South African response